Square Enix recently launched a new service named "Core Online" with the promise of full HD games in your web browser for free, seems too good to be true right? Suprisingly enough they managed to deliver, unlike the similar service Onlive the game itself is rendered on the local PC with all the required data being downloaded between levels, this means that if you can cope with a long load screen you don't need a super high speed connection like with Onlive, and that there will be no problems with input lag. This of course does have its drawbacks, because your PC is rendering it you have to have a fairly good PC to be able to run some games, which begs the question of who is this service intended for? Presumably for network optimization purposes all of the important graphics options are unavailable for tweaking which means that low end PCs will not be able to run the games very well if it all, and if you have a meaty PC more than likely you can just buy the games and download them, instead of in the browser for free.
Currently the only games it has are "Hitman: blood Money" and "Mini Ninjas" with more to come in the future. They manage to keep these free by having the player watch adverts to "earn" game time the game time earned is based on the length of the advert, with roughly one minute advert time being 20 minutes gaming time or you can purchase the game or levels and remove ads. The ratio seems intentionally non intrusive which I quite like, I'm not sure how this kind of approach could potentially affect the future of gaming, in its current state its a harmless alternative to purchasing games, but its definitely one to watch out for.
Check it out at http://beta.coreonline.com/ .Personally i'll just stick to the old fashioned way
No comments:
Post a Comment